Duke of Cambridge's friend Guy Pelly guilty of drink driving

Prince William and Harry's close friend Guy Pelly is found guilty of drink
driving at London's Westminster Magistrates' Court

Guy Pelly arrives at Westminster Magistrates CourtPhoto: PA

By News Agencies

11:55AM BST 25 Jul 2014

A close friend of the Duke of Cambridge has been banned from the road for a third time after being found guilty of drink driving in his £90,000 sports car while returning from one of his exclusive London nightclubs.

Guy Pelly was barred from driving for two and a half years and ordered to pay £7,120 in costs and fines after being found to be over the limit when he was pulled over while at the wheel of his Audi R8 GT V10 Coupe in London's Knightsbridge, in the early hours during May last year.

The 32-year-old initially refused to give a roadside breath test before being taken to Belgravia police station to be tested on an intoximeter machine.

He was found to have 52 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, well in excess of the legal limit of 35.

During his trial defence lawyers claimed radio waves from Pelly's iPhone and police radios interfered with the machine, making the reading unsafe.

But today District Judge John Zani ruled that Pelly, who organised Prince William’s stag party in Devon three years ago, was guilty of drink driving.

Handing down his ruling at London's Westminster Magistrates' Court, he said: "Notwithstanding exhaustive expert evidence and lengthy submissions made on his behalf, I am entirely satisfied Mr Pelly has not produced any evidence that raises the realistic possibility that the evidential breath machine in operation at Belgravia Police Station malfunctioned and produced inaccurate or unreliable readings.

"I am able to state that I am entirely satisfied that Mr Pelly has either deliberately chosen to underplay the amount of alcohol that he consumed in the period of time leading up to his arrest in the early hours... or his memory has genuinely failed him."

He added that he is "entirely satisfied with which Mr Pelly stands charged has been amply proved beyond any reasonable doubt and that he is guilty of the offence of driving with excess alcohol".

At an earlier hearing Pelly, who recently married Holiday Inn heiress Lizzy Wilson at a ceremony attended by Princes William and Harry, claimed he had drunk two 'large' glasses of red wine with dinner hours before he was stopped and arrested.

He insisted to police at the time that he had drunk two beers although later said that he was unsure of what he told them.

The nightclub boss said: “I planned to go to a nightclub I own to check on it and see that stuff was OK.

“I had two large glasses of red wine, I don’t remember what [kind] it was.”

Mr Pelly, who ran celebrity hotspots Mahiki and Whisky Mist in the past, said he opened a bottle to himself on the evening of May 27.

He then stopped drinking at around 11pm, with wine left in the bottle, but he could not remember how much, the court heard.

He continued: “I then got in my car and drove to the bar I own. I was there talking to staff, checking the customers are ok, I was in the back office, probably were my staff are, spoke to the staff there, that kind of stuff.”

He denied that he had had any more to drink at the nightclub before climbing back in to his car shortly before 1am.

He was pulled over just before 1.10am by police who claimed he had “accelerated quickly” in his luxury car.

Pelly said: “I noticed the police when they put their lights on and their sirens, and then they obviously wanted me to pull over so I pulled over to the side of the road.”

When asked why he refused to give a sample he said: “I knew that I had drunk alcohol that night, that I had drunk near to what the limit was, so I was anxious.

“In a way I panicked a little bit.”

Pelly was arrested and taken to Belgravia Police station after refusing to give a sample.

An expert witness for the defence told Hammersmith Magistrates Court that the US made intoximeter was behaving irregularly while Pelly was tested.

But prosecutor Stuart Sampson dismissed this and said Pelly's evidence that he only drunk two glasses of wine was 'not credible'.

“He says he drunk two large glasses of house red wine - which is an interesting turn of phrase when one is drinking at home.

“He told officers he drank two pints of beer as he said in his police statement which he signed.

“If Mr Pelly is correct then for an hour and a half or so before he was arrested he was in his car.

“He then went to his bar. The Crown say it is not credible he did not have a drink there'.

London's Westminster Magistrates' Court heard it was the second time Pelly has been banned for drink-driving.

In 2001 he had his licence confiscated for two years after he was pulled over for drink-driving while travelling home to "student digs" after partying during freshers' week at agricultural college.

He was breathalysed and found to have a reading "in the 90s" of microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath, nearly three times the legal limit of 35.

Pelly was previously banned from driving for 56 days and fined £750 for speeding in 2012.

District Judge John Zani said: "You have that previous like conviction. I accept that it is now 13 years ago but that was a serious offence.

"I really highlight the period of disqualification for you, then a younger man of good character, and the court then disqualified you for two years.

"Sadly that did not deter you from, years later, when you were stopped in 2013."

He added: "What you need to bear in mind is that anybody driving a motor vehicle is in possession of a potentially lethal weapon. And when you drive with excess alcohol, or any alcohol, your thought process can be affected."

Pelly’s friendship with the two princes stems from their participation in the Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt.